PLAN building schedule 2021 to 2025

Maikeru said:

but there must be bottlenecks elsewhere in the production line? Reactors?

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It is not only about building them. It is also about having a highly capable and trained crew and officers to man each submarine.

China could produce submarines like sausages but where is the trained crew in huge numbers is going to come from?

There is also the issue of having enough maintenance facilities which must also have a highly-trained workforce.

To conclude, it is important to consider other factors other than "just" quickly building submarines (and other ships wrt PLAN schedule for building ships)

Overbom said:

It is not only about building them. It is also about having a capable trained crew and officers to man each submarine.

China could produce submarines like sausages but where is the trained crew in huge bumbers is going to come from?

There is also the issue of having enough maintenance facilities which must also have a highly-trained workforce.

To conclude, it is important to consider other factors other than "just" quickly building submarines (and other ships wrt PLAN schedule for building ships)

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Yes and trained crew is probably the biggest bottleneck of all. Thought also needs to be given to end of life recycling and reactor disposal.

All that said, PRC wouldn't be building these enormous facilities without an intention to use them.

Overbom said:

It is not only about building them. It is also about having a highly capable and trained crew and officers to man each submarine.

China could produce submarines like sausages but where is the trained crew in huge numbers is going to come from?

There is also the issue of having enough maintenance facilities which must also have a highly-trained workforce.

To conclude, it is important to consider other factors other than "just" quickly building submarines (and other ships wrt PLAN schedule for building ships)

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There has been a popular thinking for many years on China's lack of trained sailors and maintenance crew and facilities, which I think is amazingly ignorant. Many have written such statements but were unable to backup their claims.

Firstly, on the submarine crew training. How many sailors are needed to crew a submarine? How many submarines do they built in a year? How many submarines are given dedicated training roles only (i.e. not frontline combattant)? How many sailors graduated from the PLAN training academies and training bases, and how many PLA Navy universiities are there?

If you do your information homework, there will surface surprisingly many information on PLA Navy educations and trainings unreported on Western media reading material.

The same goes for maintenance facilities and maintenance crew. Do you know how many naval engineering graduates are produce every year? The total number of all types of engineers and technicians in China is huge..

I can't give details because there wouls\d be pages after pages of writing, and would take up a lot of my time and people reading them, but please go google and baidu on available public materials in English and Chinese.

lcloo said:

There has been a popular thinking for many years on China's lack of trained sailors and maintenance crew and facilities, which I think is amazingly ignorant. Many have written such statements but were unable to backup their claims.

Firstly, on the submarine crew training. How many sailors are needed to crew a submarine? How many submarines do they built in a year? How many submarines are given dedicated training roles only (i.e. not frontline combattant)? How many sailors graduated from the PLAN training academies and training bases, and how many PLA Navy universiities are there?

If you do your information homework, there will surface surprisingly many information on PLA Navy educations and trainings unreported on Western media reading material.

The same goes for maintenance facilities and maintenance crew. Do you know how many naval engineering graduates are produce every year? The total number of all types of engineers and technicians in China is huge..

I can't give details because there wouls\d be pages after pages of writing, and would take up a lot of my time and people reading them, but please go google and baidu on available public materials in English and Chinese.

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There's training, which I don't doubt PLAN can do well. And there's experience, which can only be gained through time actually doing.

Maikeru said:

There's training, which I don't doubt PLAN can do well. And there's experience, which can only be gained through time actually doing.

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PLAN's latest SSK. i.e. type 039B was first introduce in 2007, that is 14 years ago. They have 17 type 039B SSK as per open source data. I believe their experience gained by past and present submarine crew is plentiful, and their training curriculum would be sufficiently comprehensive to prepare new sailors to man their ship before any submarine is handed-over from ship builders to PLAN.

Also new cadet crews can be trained on an existing type 039B before their posting to a new SSK of the same type or an improved latest variant of the same type.

Also the newly minted submarine would very likely crewed by a mixed of experienced hands and new sailors instead of a all new crew. In fact I would say that new sailors are posted on every ships, new and old, along with the experienced sailors for on the job training, thus the crew of a newly inducted ship differs not much from that of an older ship of the same type. (exception: the lead ship of a new type ship, eg. type 055 and type 075).

Thus the proficiency of the crew for a newly inducted type 039B would not be much different from an earlier type 039B inducted more than 10 years ago. They will only need to get familiarisation on new minor features not present in earlier ships.

@Totoro

AndrewS said:

This is what I've got as major warship construction for the 2021-2025 plan

20 Type-054A Frigates
1+ Type-054B Frigates
20 Type-052D/E Destroyers
8 Type-055 Large Destroyers
1+ Type-076 LHDs with EMALs catapults
1+ Supercarriers (85k tonnes) with EMALs catapults

This doesn't include submarines or amphibs

In the following 5 years, I expect a further acceleration in the pace of naval construction

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It's essentially a similar build rate as the previous 2016-2020 period.

There's no need to stretch construction into the next plan covering 2026-2030, given the resources available to China and the Cold War.
This build rate is also sustainable in my opinion, given the favourable economic forecasts and how China is actively dealing with its issues
So the next period covering 2026-2030 would see even more construction

AndrewS said:

@Totoro



It's essentially a similar build rate as the previous 2016-2020 period.

There's no need to stretch construction into the next plan covering 2026-2030, given the resources available to China and the Cold War.
This build rate is also sustainable in my opinion, given the favourable economic forecasts and how China is actively dealing with its issues
So the next period covering 2026-2030 would see even more construction

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This is an incredibly bottom heavy construction plan. Is it reasonable to assume China would want a ratio of 20x large surface combatants to each flattop (both LHD and CVN)? I would assume that china destroyer production will decrease from 2016-2020 as PLAN has now cycled through most of the obsolete DDG and FFGs. The ratio of surface combatants has largely reached the 60-70% of total USN assets required for parity in PACOM, while there are huge gaps still in LHD and CVN.

j17wang said:

This is an incredibly bottom heavy construction plan. Is it reasonable to assume China would want a ratio of 20x large surface combatants to each flattop (both LHD and CVN)? I would assume that china destroyer production will decrease from 2016-2020 as PLAN has now cycled through most of the obsolete DDG and FFGs. The ratio of surface combatants has largely reached the 60-70% of total USN assets required for parity in PACOM, while there are huge gaps still in LHD and CVN.

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20 Type-052D is what the rumours are saying
And LHDs aren't actually that useful by themselves, given the distances in the 1st Island Chain

There's only so fast you can accelerate CV and CVN construction
Plus the airwing in terms of J-35s and KJ-600s will take another 5 years of development

And I actually see the Chinese Navy aiming for much higher than 60-70% of total USN assets

AndrewS said:

20 Type-052D is what the rumours are saying
And LHDs aren't actually that useful by themselves, given the distances in the 1st Island Chain

There's only so fast you can accelerate CV and CVN construction
Plus the airwing in terms of J-35s and KJ-600s will take another 5 years of development

And I actually see the Chinese Navy aiming for much higher than 60-70% of total USN assets

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Rumors also say there're gonna be 5 more 075s and maybe 8 more 071s. I think they're still very useful. At least Taiwan will have to pay more attention to the defense of its eastern shore.

blindsight said:

Rumors also say there're gonna be 5 more 075s and maybe 8 more 071s. I think they're still very useful. At least Taiwan will have to pay more attention to the defense of its eastern shore.

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If China already controls the Western part of Taiwan, it also means that China has already won
Eastern Taiwan barely has any population and Taiwan is only 100km wide

I suspect that the orders for the Type-075 might actually be turned into orders for Type-076